What is Lost
by kyokki
Summary: Two years after the war ended Shepard is still seeking the one she had lost behind the sea. Can Kaidan make her see that she should stay on the sand?


This story was one that sat in my brain for a while, knocking until I had to let it come out and stretch.

Mass Effect belongs to Bioware

**What is Lost**

Her side of the bed was empty. He lay there, his head turned on the pillow, regarding that emptiness with weary eyes. This was not unexpected.

He rubbed at his chest, right over his heart, willing the dull ache that remained there from the night before away. It was stubborn, more so than it had been the first time, or even the second time that this had happened.

And every time she disappeared. But, he thought as he pulled back the sheets and swung his legs over the side of the bed, at least he knew where to find her. She always went to the same place.

He pulled on a pair of loose pants and tightened the drawstring.

She would be at the sea. Always at the sea.

She was further out this time, he saw immediately as he stepped out onto the deck of his parent's house. He walked carefully down the stairs, not taking his eyes off her, thigh deep in the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean. He called out to her only when his own bare feet touched the edge of the surf, well within distance to reach her in time.

"Shepard." His voice was soft, but he knew she would hear him.

Her head turned slightly at the sound of his voice, her long hair hiding her eyes as it whipped in the brine wind.

"Kaidan." She whispered, the wind nearly carrying her words away. "I did it again, didn't I?" Now she turned, but her eyes were still downcast., not meeting his dark gaze. "I'm so sorry."

Now he looked away, tried to tell himself that she couldn't help calling out another man's name while she was with him. A dead man's name. It took a second, but he managed, almost, to convince himself. But they couldn't continue this way. Something had to be done, and damn him if he could figure out what it was.

What he couldn't do, apparently, was convince her to forget him.

And how could he compete with a memory, a ghost?

He held out his hand to her, like he had before, two years ago, his teeth gritted, pain shooting through his body, through his heart. On that day when he had thought he'd lose her forever. She had told him she loved him that day, and he had believed her, he still believed her.

"Shepard." He called again, and she stepped toward him, the hem of his discarded shirt wet and heavy with salt water.

He had vowed, that day, that if he ever got the chance to hold her hand again, that he would never let go. And he kept his promises.

Her cold fingers found his, and he held them lightly, though he wanted to crush her strong fingers in his, to let her know that he had her. But he also knew that he could never force her to do anything. She had to come to him of her own free will.

He looked at her, as they stepped together out of the waves, his gaze fastened on her face, though her eyes were still averted. She was just as beautiful today as she had been the first day her had seen her board the SR-1. So strong, so confident, her hair tightly knotted on her head. He still remembered his first thought, how he had wondered what her hair would look like loose and flowing around her shoulders. How it would feel in his fingers, against his chest.

And that was just in the moment they had met, the moment he had lost his heart to her.

And now his fingers reached out, smoothing a stray lock back from her cheek, his fingers lingering on the skin there, skin marked with a light spider web of scars from the fire that had nearly claimed her when the Presidium exploded, blasting her into the wreckage of the Wards.

"I'm sorry, Kaidan." She said again, and he knew she was apologizing for more than that moment, when she had gasped out that name in the midst of their lovemaking.

'Thane'.

The Drell assassin, the one she had loved, and lost on that horrible day when Cerberus had attacked the Citadel. The one she couldn't forget.

Gently he pulled her un-protesting body into his arms and sank with her onto the sands of the beach. "It's all right, Shepard." He whispered softly into her hair.

"No, it's not." She protested, shaking her head against his chest. "Don't be so kind to me. It's not fair to you, Kaidan."

"Nothing's fair, Shepard." He stroked her back. "You know that better than anyone."

"I don't deserve you." She said it flatly, as fact.

"I think I can decide what you deserve." He tried to keep his tone light, but was afraid he was failing miserably. "And I think you deserve everything you want in the galaxy."

"Everything I want." She repeated, her voice cracking on the last word. "I can't have."

His arms tightened despite himself. "You have me. You have your friends, your crew who would do anything for you."

"And yet, I'm even more selfish."

"Selfish." He infused the word with scorn.

She tried to sit up, but he wouldn't let her. "Let go of me."

"Never, Shepard." He let some steel creep into his voice. "I will never let you go. I made that mistake once, remember." He realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Her pale eyes became distant, remembering the one who had filled the aching gap he had left behind with his rejection, filled and overflowed.

When one of the crew of the Normandy had let slip, he couldn't remember who, about her liaison with the assassin, he had blamed himself, probably rightly, for her turning to another's arms. He had been harsh. Hadn't listened to her, hadn't trusted her. And so she had found someone who had. And she had fallen in love with him.

No matter that he had been a different species. No matter that he had been dying. Oh, yes. He knew that as well. And at first he had been glad. But then he hadn't known that Thane's death would rip open that gap, and that nothing he could pour into it would ever fill it again.

He swallowed. "Tell me about him, Shepard. Tell me about the one you're looking for across the sea."

She struggled against his hold again, but for all that she was strong physically he was stronger and he held her in unmoving arms. "I can't. I can't do that to you, Kaidan."

He pressed his lips against her head, inhaling her scent. "Yes, you can. You listened to me when I spoke of Rahna, the girl that I lost. I can listen to you when you speak of him."

"But what if…" She bit her lip and looked down at the waves that lapped her toes.

"Shepard, please." Maybe if she talked about him, got it all out in the air…

"He said he'd wait for me there." She finally said after a long count of the heartbeat waves. "That he loved me and he'd wait for me across the sea."

She took a deep breath. "He was gentle. Kind without consciously being so, without thinking that he was. And when he looked at me it was like everything else ceased to exist, just for that moment…" She fell silent, then struggled against Kaidan's grip again. "I shouldn't…"

He hushed her with a gentle brush of his lips against the back of her neck, a soothing stroke of his hand down her cold arm. "It's all right. I want to know."

She took another sobbing breath and started talking again. "When he moved it was like he was a shadow dancing…"

And Kaidan listened, even as his memory took him back to two years ago, when he had fought back from the brink of death to find himself in Huerta Memorial Hospital, in a dark room with machines singing quietly around him. She had visited him earlier in the day and now their conversation ran over and over through his head. What he had said, what she had said, what he should have said differently.

Her apologizing for seeking another's arms after he had rejected hers. Apologizing for hurting him, but not for loving another. Distance and Cerberus, she had said. He shut his eyes and rubbed at his heart.

"She is a special woman, is she not."

Kaidan bolted upright, then squeezed his eyes together as pain lanced through his head and neck. A gentle hand placed behind his neck, another on his chest, guiding him back down onto his pillow.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the man who had appeared in his room as silently and darkly as a shadow. He couldn't see much, a cast of pale green, a shine on dark eyes coming from the window.

"You're the one…"

"As are you." Thane replied, once certain Kaidan was comfortable he removed his hands and seated himself on the stool where Shepard had earlier sat.

"Are you here to kill me?"

Lips twitched up in a smile. "If I were you would not be alive to ask the question." He leaned forward, folding his hands before his mouth, bringing more of his features into the light. An alien face, but even Kaidan could see the beauty of the Drell man. "But to set your mind at ease I would not kill you. I told her I would look out for your welfare, and as always my arm is hers."

"If that's true then why aren't you with her now?"

"Because I am dying." He said it so calmly, so quietly, with such gentle acceptance of the fact. "And I would not want her to see. She has enough weight on her shoulders without me adding to it."

"But she still wants you."

"Yes." Again, calmly, quietly, stating a fact. "And I her. But what we want and what is needed in this case does not coincide."

"If it were me, I wouldn't leave her." Kaidan continued stubbornly, wondering at his conviction. But Shepard deserved to be with the man she loved, even if that man wasn't him.

The assassin regarded him stoically.

"Not again." Kaidan closed his eyes.

"Believe me. This decision caused me a great deal of pain. But I am used to pain and difficult decisions. If I were a healthy man…" Two sets of eyelids fluttered shut, then open. "But I am not. It is better she remembers me as I am, rather than the drowning shell I will become. I will spare her that pain. That I cannot be with her until the end."

They were silent for some long moments.

"But I will ask you…"

Kaidan turned his head, his brow furrowing.

Thane was looking down, his brow ridges lowered over his dark eyes. His whole posture for the first time tense, uncertain. What he was about to say was difficult for him. "I will ask you to take care of her. In my place. She is so strong and yet…" The man stood, turned and walked to the window, his every movement like a shadow dancing as he braced his forearm against the glass. "And yet so fragile. Vulnerable. _She leans against me, stormcloud eyes asking what her lips cannot say. Her hands delicate against my skin, warm, seeking. _'Stay with me.' _She whispers… her breath warm against my throat. _'For as long as you can.' _Sadness tears through the stormclouds, tears falling like rain against my chest. With a quick and angry hand she rubs them away._" The assassin straightened, turning, his expression painful. "I apologize. I have been living so much in my memories of her. It is easy to slip into them against my will."

Kaidan looked away, his jaw clenching.

"I did not mean to pain you." The assassin resumed his seat. "And I will not ask you to pursue her. But if she seeks you out… If she seeks your comfort and your love. I ask that you do not turn her away. Not because of the love she and I share."

"So you're…giving her to me?" Kaidan's eyes blazed furiously. "She is not a… a _prize_…"

Thane held up a hand. "Your anger carries you beyond my words. She is not a prize to be won, I agree. Nor a gift to be given, is my Siha. I will be beyond the sea, unable to protect her. Even now I cannot protect her."

"So you want me to replace you?"

Another small twitch of the lips, but whatever thought caused the smile the Drell kept to himself. "I merely ask that you will consider being the rock to break the waves that will seek to claim that special woman we both love."

Kaidan closed his eyes as another stab of pain threatened to drag him down. When his eyes opened again the Drell was gone.

…

Kaidan listened as she spoke, as the sun burned off the clinging mists and gilded the frothing waves. He listened to her breath as she at last fell silent, lying limply against his chest, drained from releasing what she had held so tightly to her heart for such a long time. He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, bared from the slipping neckline of his too-large shirt, listening to her moan of mixed pleasure and sadness.

Then she turned and wrapped her arms around him, seeking comfort in his arms and his mouth and his body as the tide turned and he turned as well so the seeking waves crashed against his back.

Kaidan put down his duffel as he walked through the front door of his parent's house. The house looked empty, felt empty. But he knew where to find her. At the sea, always the sea.

He felt a smile crease his face as he stepped out onto the porch and saw her. Her hair was in a loose braid as she walked along the sand, slowly, holding the skirt of her dress up out of the surf with one hand. She stopped and looked over her shoulder as their son, their son conceived on a day of grief and passion and love among the waves, ran up to her, holding a seashell in his hands.

"What kind is it, Thanash?" The waves carried her soft voice to him. Thane Ash. Named for two people they had lost during that endless war. She had looked at him for approval the day he was born and he had smiled his acceptance. But Garrus had been the one to squash the names together into one, calling it a good Turian name, as he gave Kaidan a sidelong look with his too-knowing blue eyes.

Kaidan agreed, if only for the laughter the statement had put into Shepard's.

"Dentalium." He told her seriously, his dark eyes on his hands. "The shell of a scaphpod mollusk. Specifically a shell of the Antalis pretiosum."

Kaidan walked down the stairs, his boots finding the sand as he approached them.

"Is that so." Shepard replied, and Kaidan could hear amusement in her voice as she ruffled his tousled hair. "Were there more?"

"I'll show you, Shepard-mom." Kaidan wasn't sure where he had picked that one up, perhaps because everyone called her Shepard, even him, her husband. The boy took her hand as Kaidan finally reached them and took the other.

"Show us both, son."

"Dad!" Thanash yelled and tossed the shell, which Shepard deftly caught, before flinging himself at his father's free arm.

"Careful there." He laughed as he held the giggling boy over his arm, though his eyes were on Shepard's smiling face.

"You're back a day early." She said.

"I was in a hurry." He kissed her softly. "Shall we go inside?"

Thanash squirmed out of his grasp. "But I still have to show Shepard-mom the dentalium!" And he took off down the beach.

Shepard and Kaidan exchanged a smile even though hers was tinged with an odd wistfulness. Without a word they set off down the beach after the boy, and if her eyes lingered on the horizon it was only for a few long moments before they trained back to her husband's face.


End file.
